The Washington Post National Weekly

Worst Week Sen. Mitch McConnell 3

Politics Poll shows no GOP standout 4

Health Stand tall at work 17

5 Myths Body cameras 23

ABCDE NATIONAL WEEKLY SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2015

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IN COLLABORATION WITH

Results and Repercussions How the Clintons built a $2 billion global charity, and how it’s become a problem for Hillary PAGE 12

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KLMNO WEEKLY

WORST WEEK IN WASHINGTON

Sen. Mitch McConnell

by Chris Cillizza

M

itch McConnell is the master of Senate rules and regulations. He proved that time and again during Republicans’ long, dark spell in the minority, using the arcana that is the Senate rule book to stall or stop legislation that he and his side didn’t like.

That’s why McConnell’s mishandling — by anyone’s assessment — of the Senate floor debate this past week over the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of telephone data was so baffling.

The majority leader knew he had a fight on his hands to renew some of the controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act that authorized the NSA program: The guy leading the opposition happened to be Sen. Rand Paul, his colleague from Kentucky and the person McConnell has endorsed for president in 2016.

When McConnell lost Round 1 of that showdown — the Senate adjourned for a week­long Memorial Day recess without voting on either the House­passed bill on surveillance or its own version — everyone assumed that he was absorbing a tactical defeat to win the bigger war.

Nope. The Senate reconvened Sunday night, a few hours before the provisions were set to sunset, and again Paul, not McConnell, had the upper hand.

“Most puzzling to some were the veteran lawmaker’s actions that allowed a first­term senator . . . to use the Senate’s elaborate rules to delay things long enough to cause the entire USA Patriot Act to lapse for a couple of

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ANDREW HARNIK/ASSOCIATED PRESS

days, starting at midnight Sunday,” the Associated Press’s Chuck Babington and Laurie Kellman wrote about McConnell’s flub.

Paul lost on policy but won on politics: He scored lots and lots of attention for the suspension of the provisions for 48 hours or so. McConnell wound up taking the deal he could have taken long before — passing the House version of the legislation, which will end the government’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

Mitch McConnell, for legislating yourself into a corner, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something. n

This publication was prepared by editors at The Washington Post for printing and distribution by our partner publications across the country. All articles and columns have previously appeared in The Post or on washingtonpost.com and have been edited to fit this format. For questions or comments regarding content, please e-mail weekly@washpost.com. If you have a question about printing quality, wish to subscribe, or would like to place a hold on delivery, please contact your local newspaper’s circulation department. © 2015 The Washington Post / Year 1, No. 34

CONTENTS POLITICS THE NATION THE WORLD COVER STORY SPORTS BOOKS OPINION FIVE MYTHS

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ON THE COVER Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton on stage during the closing plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York on Sept. 22, 2011. Photograph by LUCAS JACKSON, Reuters

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POLITICS

Poll shows bad news for both parties The GOP field is muddled, while opinions about Clinton’s attributes decline

BY D AN B ALZ AND P EYTON M . C RAIGHILL

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fter five months of forums, fundraising appearances and trips to the early states, the 2016 Republican nomination contest is as unsettled as ever, with no candidate receiving more than 11 percent support and seven candidates all within three points of one another, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Meanwhile, Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to dominate the Democratic nomination contest.

But her personal attributes continue to erode in the wake of stories about fundraising practices at the Clinton Foundation and her use of a personal e-mail server while at the State Department.

Clinton’s favorability ratings are the lowest in a Post-ABC poll since April 2008, when she was running for president the first time. Today, 41 percent of Americans say she is honest and trustworthy, compared with 52 percent who say she is not — a 22-point swing in the past year.

With the first Republican debate two months away and criteria for participation determined by standing in national polls, the GOP’s quandary in having such a large field becomes increasingly clear.

Both Fox News and CNN, which will host the first two debates, have said they will pick the top 10 candidates for their primary debate programs based on an average of national polls.

At this point, the Post-ABC poll finds the Republican field is largely a muddled mass, underscoring just how wide open the race continues to be and foreshadowing likely movement among the candidates as voters get to know them better.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky top the list at 11 percent each among Republicans and Republican-leaning independent registered voters.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida are at 10 percent each. All others among the 16 candidates tested are in single digits.

Given that the margin of error is plus or minus six percentage points for questions about the state of the Republican nomination contest, it is easy to see why candidates in single digits may feel little discouragement about their standing, while those at the top are anything but secure.

Big shifts The current poll looks different than the last Post-ABC survey of the Republican field, in late

March. Bush stood at 21 percent then and held a lead of eight points over his nearest rival, Walker. In the intervening time, as more candidates have formally launched campaigns, Bush’s support has been cut in half. Whether that is a temporary condition or indicative of deeper problems for his candidacy is not clear.

Bush has not formally declared for president and continues to stockpile money into a super PAC, which he will be legally limited

from interacting with once he announces. Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” the former governor said “I hope I run” but insisted he had not made up his mind. That raised eyebrows, given how energetic he has been not only in fundraising but in campaigning around the country and hiring staff at a rapid pace.

Beyond the four Republicans in double digits, the next six in order are former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, former surgeon Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and businessman Donald Trump.

Those not making the top 10 in this survey include Ohio Gov. John Kasich, former businesswoman Carly Fiorina, former Texas governor Rick Perry, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, former New York governor George Pataki and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Although the field is tightly bunched, there are some clear signs of the ideological and demographic appeal of individual candidates.

Bush, Paul and Rubio appear to appeal about equally to men and women. Walker’s support is greater among men than women.

Ideologically, Bush’s support is greater among Republican-leaning voters who say they are “somewhat conservative” or “moderate.” His support among those who say they are “very conservative” is minimal.

Paul’s is similarly structured, although he does better than Bush among the most conservative.

The two favorites among those who say they are very conservative are Cruz and Carson. Walker and Rubio appeal more broadly across the ideological spectrum, though their support tilts to the right rather than the center.

Another way to measure Republicans’ standing is by looking at whether people view them positively or negatively. Three Republicans — Huckabee, Bush and Rubio — have favorability ratings of slightly more than 50 percent among self-identified Republicans. But Bush’s net favorability rating — positive minus negative — is only fifth best out of nine

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POLITICS Republicans tested, trailing Rubio, Huckabee, Walker and Cruz.

Trump has by far the worst image among Republicans, with 23 percent rating him positively and 65 percent negatively. The only other Republican with a net negative image among fellow partisans is Christie, who is seen positively by 35 percent and negatively by 38 percent.

Rubio’s profile is the best in the GOP field, at 53 percent favorable and 16 percent unfavorable. The senator from Florida is also the only candidatetestedwhohasanetpositive rating among independents and who is not in the negative among the overall population.

trustworthy highlights a likely vulnerability as a general-election candidate. Half of all Americans disapprove of the way she has handled questions about the Clinton Foundation, and 55 percent disapprove of how she has handled questions about her personal emails as secretary of state.

Meanwhile, half also disapprove of the way she has dealt with questions about the attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The survey tested Clinton against Bush in a possible generalelection matchup. Among registered voters, she led 47 percent to 44 percent, within the poll’s fourpoint error margin among voters.

Two months ago, she had a 12-point lead over Bush in that hypothetical ballot test.

Bush fares better than Clinton on trust and honesty, with 45 percent rating him as honest and trustworthy and 40 percent saying he is not. But Clinton does better on the question of who appears to be empathetic with average people. Clinton’s rating is slightly net positive, while Bush’s is net negative by 20 points. n

Trouble for Clinton?

Clinton’s favorability rating has fallen steadily since she left the Obama administration in early 2013. Today, 45 percent see her positivelywhile49percentseehernegatively. That compares with ratings of 49 percent and 46 percent two months ago. Just 24 percent have a strongly favorable impression of her — down six points in the past two months — while 39 percent have a strongly unfavorable impression, up four points.

The decline in Clinton’s ratings as a candidate who is honest and

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Some politicians not among the top 10 GOP presidential hopefuls in this survey: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, bottom left; Ohio Gov. John Kasich, top right; and former businesswoman Carly Fiorina.

STEVEN SENNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

ERIK S. LESSER/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

CHARLES KRUPA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

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POLITICS

In Iowa, Paul’s crusade is tough sell J AMES H OHMANN Davenport, Iowa BY

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and Paul notched a big victory in Washington by following through on his promise to block the renewal of the anti-terrorism law used to justify domestic spying programs.

But back in Iowa, where Paul has tried to use the issue to revive his struggling presidential campaign, many Republican voters have responded with unease.

Even some who stood in line to see Paul said that they simply could not agree with his argument that the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection was an unreasonable invasion of privacy.

“If you’re not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?” said Tom Charlton, 64, a retired sales training manager for a tire company, who was first in line at a book-signing with Paul in Davenport. “If this can stop one attack, it’s worth infringing on legal citizens’ rights.”

Another Republican, retired teacher Sally Cram, 62, said after leaving a town hall with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that she supports the program because “I’m a person who believes our government tells us the truth.”

Paul’s anti-NSA crusade has differentiated him from a crowded pack of candidates and reinvigorated the devoted activists and donors who zealously backed his father, Ron Paul, in 2012.

But, as the skeptical response here has demonstrated, preaching to the choir is not necessarily winning over fresh converts. Paul’s hard-line stance on the NSA has found little resonance among the rank-and-file Republicans that he will need to win over if he hopes to find success in the caucuses here that kick off the presidential nominating calendar in February.

The dynamic suggests that Paul, whose campaign has stumbled since its launch in April, continues to struggle with competing political demands. On one hand, he must broaden his appeal in a party still largely defined by national security hawkishness — as evidenced by his

BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

NSA supporters wonder, ‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?’ softening views on foreign aid and military intervention. Yet he also must excite a core libertarian base, motivated by anger over the NSA and skeptical of interventionist foreign policy.

A new Bloomberg News-Des Moines Register poll shows that Paul is the first choice of 10 percent of likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers.

That’s high enough for Paul to be tied for second place (behind Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker), but the results reveal weaknesses. His standing, for instance, is well below the 21 percent tally won by his father in the 2012 caucuses. And the new survey found that Paul’s favorability rating has slipped by nine points since January, the biggest drop for anyone in the field.

After Paul effectively blocked the original Senate bill, the Senate last week passed, and the president signed, the USA Freedom Act, which had passed the House and had the support of a bipartisan coalition from President Obama to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a presi-

dential primary rival.

In Iowa, Paul has present himself as a champion of Americans’ constitutional rights. Speaking at a minor-league baseball stadium on the Mississippi River, Paul opened by apologizing that his voice was “still a little raspy” because of his Senate talk-athon “to protect your privacy.” He received some loud cheers, but not everyone applauded.

Paul allies say the issue is a winner because those who agree with the senator are passionate and will be energized to volunteer and turn out to vote.

Even if Paul’s latest Senate maneuvers spark skepticism from many in his party, his team says that the issue can reassure those who backed his father but worry that he has sold out by cozying up to the GOP establishment.

The Paul team also argues that the issue could expand the electorate by galvanizing millennials to participate in the low-turnout Republican caucuses for the first

Sen. Rand Paul is trying to rev up his base and differentiate himself from a crowded pack of candidates with his arguments against NSA spying.

time. In speeches, Paul notes that surveys show younger people are more likely to feel that government surveillance has gone too far.

In fact, polling is all over the place on the NSA issue, and opinions depend largely on how the question is asked. A New York Times poll in September found that 44 percent of Republicans thought that the government had achieved about the right balance in restricting people’s civil liberties to fight terrorism. About a quarter said that it did not go far enough, and a similar number said that it went too far.

Paul spokesman Sergio Gor said the showdown is about principle, not politics. “Senator Paul will follow the Constitution over any poll,” he said.

Paul allies acknowledge that there has been a pendulum swing since 2013, when former CIA contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of the NSA programs.

“It became a big deal after Edward Snowden, but now it hasn’t been in the news that much,” said Brian Duffy, 28, an executive at his family’s security business who was inspired to become a libertarian

by Ron Paul but hasn’t yet committed to Rand Paul for 2016. “Unfortunately, people have come to accept that’s just how it has to be.

Personally, I believe it’s a big encroachment on our privacy.”

NSA officials say that the programs collect only metadata, such as phone numbers dialed and the duration of calls. Officials argue that this allows them to learn about a suspected terrorist’s affiliates without having to get individual search warrants.

Even so, a number of voters said they thought that the NSA records all phone calls and reads their e-mails. And, most of these voters said, that is fine with them.

“It doesn’t bother me because anybody who says illegal stuff on the phone is flat stupid,” Navy veteran Alan Loomis, 62, said. “I got my makeup and my smile on all the time because 90 percent of the places I go, I know I’m on camera . . . I just accept it. I don’t like it, but it’s part of the world now.” n

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KLMNO WEEKLY

School choice is put to test in Nevada

BY L YNDSEY L AYTON AND E MMA B ROWN

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tarting next school year, any parent in Nevada can pull a child from the state’s public schools and take tax dollars with them, giving families the option to use public money to pay for private or parochial school or even for home schooling.

The new law, which the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed with help from the education foundation created by former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R), is a breakthrough for conservatives, who call it the ultimate in school choice. And they are working to spread it nationwide.

Democrats, teachers unions, public school superintendents and administrators are alarmed, saying that the Nevada law to provide private school vouchers is the first step toward dismantling the nation’s public schools.

Although other states increasingly have allowed tax dollars to be used for private school tuition, most limit the programs to students with disabilities or from low-income families. A few states, such as Indiana, have expanded the option to the middle class.

Nevada’s law is singular because all of the state’s 450,000 K-12 public school children — regardless of income — are eligible to take the money to whatever school they choose.

“It’s just a huge victory for the children of Nevada and all of us who have been working on this for so many years,” said Robert Enlow, chief executive of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, an advocacy group dedicated to the principles of free marketeer Milton Friedman.

“What this will do is continue to spread ripples across the country. . . . This bill shows that you can actually politically get it done.”

Supporters of the Nevada plan said lawmakers were obligated to give students alternatives to public schools in the state, which regularly scrapes bottom when compared with other states on academic achievement.

“Nothing works better than

JOHN LOCHER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Under nation’s most expansive law, any student in state can get voucher to pay for private tuition competition,” said state Sen. Scott Hammond, the chief sponsor of the legislation. The Las Vegas Republican said he was inspired when he attended a Friedman Foundation seminar during a vacation to Utah last year.

“I think a healthy public school system has choice, and we’re going to see all kinds of schools pop up to serve the individual needs of students,” said Hammond, a longtime public school teacher who will soon become an administrator at a charter school. “I don’t think we’re going to see an exodus from the schools. I think it will be more of a slow, measured response, at least in the beginning.”

School choice is primed to become a top education issue in the 2016 presidential campaign, as several would-be or declared GOP candidates, including Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), seek to spread school choice and vouchers. Dem-

ocratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton has long been opposed, saying vouchers siphon away scarce dollars from public schools.

Bob Farrace, a spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said the Nevada law is a betrayal of the American commitment to public education.

“Funneling public funds to private schools means fewer teachers, fewer counselors, fewer supplemental services and, in general, fewer opportunities for the vast majority of kids who remain in public schools,” he said. “It really violates the public trust when policymakers place individual benefit before public good.”

The measure passed on a partyline vote in both houses of the Nevada legislature. Assemblyman Elliot T. Anderson, a Las Vegas Democrat, said the new program could face a legal challenge because the state constitu-

Under the law that Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Tuesday, low-income families or students with disabilities can receive the same amount the state spends per public school student, or an average of about $5,700, while middleand upper-income families will receive slightly less, about $5,100 a year.

tion prevents “public funds of any kind or character whatever” spent for sectarian purposes.

Friedman, the late University of Chicago economist, presented the idea of school vouchers in 1955 as the ultimate expression of free choice for families. The idea was long thought to be moribund but came roaring back to life in 2010 in states where Republicans took legislative control.

In many ways, vouchers are where the public-charter-school movement was about 20 years ago, a novel idea that is gaining traction, said Patricia Levesque, chief executive of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which Bush founded in 2008. He resigned from the foundation late last year in anticipation of a presidential bid.

“This is the wave of the future,” said Levesque, whose foundation helped Nevada legislators draft the measure while its nonprofit sister organization, Excel National, lobbied to get it passed. “In all aspects of our life, we look for ways to customize and give individuals more control over their path and destiny. . . . This is a fundamental shift in how we make decisions about education.”

Since 2006, 27 states have opted for one of three methods that transfer public tax dollars to private schools: Vouchers for students from low- and middle-income families or disabled students; tax credits, up to 100 percent of tuition, for donations to private school scholarships; and education savings accounts, which allow qualifying families to use public funds to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, online education and other services.

Under the law that Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed Tuesday, children must be enrolled in a public school for at least 100 days before they can receive a voucher. Low-income families or students with disabilities can receive the same amount the state spends per public school student, or an average of about $5,700, while middle- and upper-income families will receive slightly less, about $5,100 a year. n

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NATION

The departing of the sea T ODD C . F RANKEL Along the Salton Sea, Calif.

BY

T

he bone-dry lake bed burned crystalline and white in the midday sun.

Ecologist Bruce Wilcox hopped out of his truck and bent down to scoop up a handful of the gleaming, crusty soil.

Wilcox squeezed, then opened his fist. The desert wind scattered the lake bed like talcum powder.

“That’s disturbing,” Wilcox said, imagining what would happen if thousands of acres of this dust took flight. It’s the kind of thing that keeps him up at night.

The Salton Sea is the largest lake in California, 360 square miles of unlikely liquid pooled in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. Now the sea is slipping away. The Salton Sea needs more water — but so does just about every other place in California. And what is happening here perfectly illustrates the fight over water in the West, where epic drought has revived decades-old battles and the simple solutions have all been tried.

Allowing the Salton Sea to shrink unabated would be catastrophic, experts say. Dried lake bed, called playa, is lighter and flies farther than ordinary soil. Choking clouds of particulate matter driven by powerful desert winds could seed health problems for 650,000 people as far away as Los Angeles.

The effects would be even worse along the lake, where communities already fail federal air-quality standards and suffer the highest asthma rates in the state.

But the fate of the Salton Sea depends on a complicated series of deals that pit farms against cities, water rights against water needs, old ways of life against the new.

The drought has forced a reconsideration of these agreements, with each side jealously guarding its claim to what little water is left.

Created by accident more than a century ago and fed largely by agricultural runoff, the Salton Sea is a difficult place to champion.

Once a playground for Hollywood stars in the 1950s and ’60s, the lake today is stark, largely abandoned and plagued by fish kills and nox-

BONNIE JO MOUNT/THE WASHINGTON POST

California’s largest lake is slipping away, and the environmental threat rises as the water recedes ious bubbles of hydrogen sulfide.

Birds still love the lake. They flock here year round. The Salton Sea provides habitat for more than 400 species — the second-greatest diversity of bird species in the U.S. Bird populations would plummet if the lake shrank further, if wetlands disappeared and fish populations withered. But it is the dust that scares people. After years of farm runoff, the lake bed is toxic, with high levels of arsenic, selenium and even traces of DDT. That nightmare scenario has played out before, 280 miles north, in the Owens River Valley. Nearly 100 years ago, Lake Owens was drained by the Los Angeles aqueduct to quench the young city’s burgeoning thirst. The dust billowed out of the dry lake bed, feeding dust levels that today can reach 10 times the level federal officials consider safe.

Today, efforts to control the damage drag on at Lake Owens.

More than $1.3 billion has been spent on mitigation. But the bar-

ren lake bed is still the No. 1 source of dust in the United States.

“All the mistakes made there are the ones we’re trying to not to repeat here,” Wilcox said.

The Salton Sea lies about three hours east of San Diego in an agricultural anomaly in the desert made possible because Colorado River water has been diverted through canals and aqueducts.

In 1905, one of these canals burst, and water pooled along an ancient basin 230 feet below sea level and the Salton Sea was born.

The Imperial Valley gets 70 percent of California’s annual allotment of water from the Colorado River. For decades, the water seemed endless. The Salton Sea boomed. In the 1950s, resorts popped up. Guy Lombardo hung out with Frank Sinatra. “Greetings from the Salton Sea” postcards showed families playing on sand.

Fish loved the lake, too. It became one of the nation’s most productive fisheries.

But the lake was always a tough

Signs of the decline of California’s Salton Sea are clear: Fish struggle to survive in the increasingly salty water, in turn threatening the migratory birds that depend on them. And a dry lake bed has the potential to cause massive dust problems.

place to live, and the water has grown increasingly salty as the result of evaporation and stagnation. Pressure on the Salton Sea began to mount in the late 1990s as Nevada and Arizona pushed for their share of the Colorado River.

California was ordered to stop taking more than its allotment. Imperial Valley farmers had to share.

An agreement was hammered out in 2003, but it wasn’t popular in the Imperial Valley.

“It remains a live controversy,” said Kevin Kelley, general manager of the Imperial Irrigation District, which manages water rights for farmers in the area. “It drew a bull’s-eye on the water user here.”

Imperial Valley agreed to stop farming — and, most importantly, watering — 50,000 acres and ship that water to San Diego and the Coachella Valley for residents.

The 2003 deal envisioned that solid plans to save the sea would be in place before the 32 billiongallon tap was turned off. But that isn’t even close to happening.

Last November, the irrigation district petitioned to force the state to act. And the state Water Board is still weighing its options.

The district’s new catchphrase for the sea is “smaller but sustainable.” The lake’s decline would be aggressively managed, officials say. One scenario: building a bird habitat ringed by earthen berms.

But paying for such a project remains a problem. And no one knows whether it would be enough to keep the dust at bay.

If nothing is done, the lake’s water level will plummet 20 feet in the next 15 years, according to projections. Salinity will triple.

The last of the fish will die off. And so will many of the birds.

And 100 square miles of lake bed will be exposed. The dust will be devastating.

All the sea needs is more water.

But that’s what everyone needs.

It’s a zero-sum game.

“We’re taking water from one pot and putting it in another,” Wilcox said.

He believes the Salton Sea can be saved.

For him, there is no other choice. n

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After 97 years, honoring war heroes BY

D AN L AMOTHE

A

rmy Pvts. Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts were serving as sentries under cover of darkness in France’s Argonne Forest in 1918 when reality set in: The two soldiers were surrounded by more than a dozen Germans. The German raiders opened fire on the men, wounding Johnson three times and Roberts twice, but Johnson fought on with an aggression that shocked the Germans even after his weapon wouldn’t fire.

An account of what became known as the Battle of Henry Johnson was documented in a letter to the soldier’s wife, Edna, and read into the Congressional Record a few months later. His commanding officer, Col. William Hayward, credited the 5-foot-4 Johnson — nicknamed “Black Death” — with stopping the Germans in the early hours of May 15, 1918, from dragging away Roberts.

Johnson concussed one German with the butt stock of his rifle, and then sunk a heavy bolo knife he was carrying into another’s head, killing him. He stabbed to death at least one more attacker who was beating Roberts, allowing the Americans to toss hand grenades that prompted the rest of the Germans to flee.

Johnson is one of two World War I soldiers who posthumously was awarded the Medal of Honor last week by President Obama. The other is Sgt. William Shemin, who braved enemy fire repeatedly on Aug. 7-9, 1918, in France to recover fellow American soldiers who had been shot until he himself was wounded. Though praised by their fellow soldiers at the time, they were both denied the Medal of Honor for generations.

Concerns about racism have permeated both cases: Johnson and Roberts, both black men, received the prestigious Croix de Guerre for their valor from the French government but went unrecognized by the U.S. military for decades. Johnson’s French award included a gold palm, indicating unusually great valor. Shemin, a Jew, received the Distinguished

CAROLYN KASTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Two WWI soldiers, denied the Medal of Honor for generations, have finally gotten their due Service Cross, but little explanation was provided why the higher award was not approved.

Efforts to get the two recognized have been filled with starts and stops. In Johnson’s case, it was bolstered by the office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who submitted a 1,258-page recommendation in May 2011 after new documents were discovered. In Shemin’s case, his daughter Elsie Shemin-Roth, 86, collected records and enlisted help from Missouri’s congressional delegation.

“A lot of people advocated for [Johnson] over a long period of time, so for this to happen now nearly 100 years later, it’s pretty incredible,” said a former staff member of Schumer’s, Caroline Wekselbaum, 32.

Johnson’s case was blocked in 2003 by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted more

evidence. Schumer’s office credited Wekselbaum, in particular, with uncovering new evidence.

One of her finds was a cablegram from Gen. John J. Pershing, the top U.S. general during the war.

He cited the heroism of Johnson and Roberts while denying German propaganda that alleged that black Americans serving overseas were being mistreated.

“Before day light on May 15 Private Henry Johnson and Private Roberts while on sentry duty at some distance from one another were attacked by German raiding party estimated at 20 men, who advanced in 2 groups attacking at once from flank and rear.” Pershing wrote 3 days later. “Both men fought bravely in hand-to-hand encounters, one resorting to use of bolo knife after rifle jammed and further fighting with bayonet and [rifle] butt became impossible.”

An official in Schumer’s office

President Obama presents the Medal of Honor for Army Sgt. William Shemin to his daughters Ina Bass, left, and Elsie Shemin-Roth. Obama also presented the Medal of Honor for Sgt. Henry Johnson.

called Pershing’s memo “the holy grail” in the case, and expressed frustration with how Johnson was treated. As a black soldier in WWI, he and his colleagues in the 369th Infantry Regiment were loaned to the French military but not allowed to fight in the U.S. force.

“The guy was a second-class citizen,” the official in Schumer’s office said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the case candidly. “He wasn’t even allowed to fight under our flag.”

Shemin-Roth said in a recent news conference in Missouri that a wrong has been righted, and all is forgiven in her family. She credited retired Col. Army Erwin A. Burtnick, a leader in the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A. organization, with urging her to seek the upgrade, and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) with helping.

“Though my father always told me that his war experience was never about medals, I knew in my heart that he was deserving of the highest military award for valor, the Medal of Honor,” she said.

“When the president called me last month to tell me that he had approved the Medal of Honor, I felt an enormous sense of pride as an American Jew, and for him, and for our family, and for the entire Jewish community.”

Shemin served in the 4th Infantry Division’s 47th Infantry Regiment, and suffered shrapnel wounds while earning the Medal of Honor. He later sustained a gunshot wound to the head, but recovered and went on to play college sports at Syracuse University and raise a family with three children. He died in 1973.

Johnson’s life after World War I was filled with highs and lows. A member of the New York National Guard, he deployed with an allblack unit that became known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” the 369th Infantry Regiment. The soldiers were honored with a parade when they returned to New York, but the injuries that Johnson sustained were never properly documented, so he did not receive a Purple Heart or the medical benefits he had earned. He died destitute in July 1929. n

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WORLD

Sumo tries to regain its heft A NNA F IFIELD Tokyo BY

C

hikara Yamanobe is about as far from a sumo wrestler as it’s possible to be.

He’s so skinny that his ribs stick out, and his eyes well up when he gets manhandled in the ring. He’s also 5 years old.

Still, Chikara, whose name means “power,” wants to be a professional sumo wrestler when he grows up.

“I want to be like Endo,” he said, referring to the Japanese sumo star and heartthrob, after training for almost three hours at a dojo in northern Tokyo one recent Sunday morning.

Chances are Chikara won’t make it.

Japan’s national sport, with its traditions and Shinto rituals and requirement for physical heft, is in decline as boys in this baseballmad country lose interest in a sport that is seldom shown on prime-time TV and offers little in the way of branded goods.

In recent years, sumo has become dominated by foreigners.

When the summer grand sumo tournament wrapped up this month, the winners were all from somewhere else. Terunofuji Haruo — a Mongolian born Gantulga Ganerdene — emerged victorious from a competition that featured two of his compatriots and a Bulgarian in the top rankings. Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, along with an Egyptian and a couple of Georgians, also have featured prominently this year.

This is partly the result of a general trend away from rigid traditions — the numbers of heavily made-up geisha also are plummeting — and the life of a professional sumo wrestler being particularly tough. Aspirants must give up school at 15 and live in a communal “stable” where everything from their hairstyle to their diet is regimented.

It also stems in part from a lack of access. The main sumo matches happen in the afternoon — they are shown on the public broadcasting network while most kids are at cram school — and sumo

KO SASAKI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

With foreigners dominating the sport and boys’ interest waning, Japan courts the next generation arenas are filled largely with pensioners and tourists.

“They’re losing their demographic,” said Mike Wesemann, an American who runs the SumoTalk blog. Plus, it’s difficult for sumo to compete with other sports.

“It’s not like fathers say to their sons in the weekend, ‘Let’s go practice sumo,’ but they will go kick a ball around,” Wesemann said. “And in baseball and soccer, there are jerseys and hats that kids can wear, but they’re hardly going to wander around in a loincloth to show their love of sumo.

There’s just nothing cool about it.”

Sumo officials are all too aware of this.

“Sumo is not a familiar sport compared to others like soccer and baseball,” said Kento Nakazawa of the Japan Sumo Association, who organizes a children’s sumo class every year.

The association holds the class at as many as six locations, but on average, only 50 to 60 children show up.

“There aren’t many opportunities for kids to get to play sumo, so our aim is to provide an occasion,” Nakazawa said. “We’ll be happy if anyone, even one child, gets interested and starts to play.”

The Japan Sumo Federation, the group for amateur wrestlers, also is trying to get children interested through tournaments for junior high school students.

Noboru Yoshimura, administrative chief of the federation, said he was worried about sumo’s declining popularity. Even though martial arts became part of the junior high school curriculum in 2012, kids are choosing kendo and judo over other options. Yoshimura said the federation now provides a three-day sumo training course for teachers to boost interest.

“Sumo doesn’t require much.

There’s no equipment necessary, and it’s easier to start, so we are promoting sumo that way in order to expand the player base,” he said.

Numbers are hard to come by, but participation in the Wanpaku

Students take part in training at the Riverside Sports Center sumo facility in Tokyo. Sumo has struggled to compete with other sports for Japanese children’s attention.

sumo tournament, an event for children, has dropped from 70,000 in 1994 to 33,000 in 2014.

Starting last year, a qualifying round was held in Mongolia, and one will be held in Hawaii for the first time this year.

But at the dojo in Asakusa, a Tokyo neighborhood famous for its Buddhist temple, boys of various ages were spending hours doing exercises, wrestling with coaches and fetching bandages for grazes. In a sign of the sport’s hierarchical traditions, older boys took turns holding sweat towels for their coaches.

But the older boys also tended to the younger ones, fixing their mawashi, or loincloths, when they came loose and patiently taking them through their drills.

Boys — and they are almost always boys, as girls and women have not traditionally been allowed in the ring — generally practice sumo as a sport until high school. Then, if they want to continue, things become a lot more serious.

Toshiyo Abe sat on the tatami mats watching his son Shotaro, a 6-year-old missing a front tooth, wrestle older boys. Shotaro asked to start sumo a year ago after seeing it at one of the introductory tournaments, so now they travel an hour by train to the dojo every Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m a little envious that he is having so much fun,” Abe said.

He confessed to wanting Japanese wrestlers to work harder when Mongolians came to dominate the sport.

Some parents balk at a crucial part of getting ahead in sumo: being heavy.

“Some high school clubs make you eat until you throw up, but some clubs just leave it to you to bulk up,” Akiteru Kiyomiya said as he watched his sons, 13-yearold Itto and 10-year-old Kenshi, train. “If this is the path they want to take, then yes, I’ll support them.”

But the boys’ mother, Yumi Kiyomiya, was not so sure.

“I actually don’t want them to get big,” she said. “I just feed them balanced meals.” n

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WORLD

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Fear rules where cartel once thrived J OSHUA P ARTLOW Ocotlan, Mexico BY

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t the makeshift shrine for the Warriors of the Five, the young men are listed by their gang handles: Chicken. Nacho. Whitey. In the photos, some have elaborate tattoos, others brandish guns.

Eleven of the men killed by police in May in one of the deadliest clashes of Mexico’s drug war came from the blocks of Infonavit 5, a poor neighborhood in this farming town in Jalisco state. The relatives and neighbors who stop to pay tribute don’t dispute that at least some of them may have worked for the New Generation drug cartel. But that label means little here.

They don’t see them as gangsters but as childhood friends who guarded homes, watched parked cars, kept drunks from disrespecting the women. It’s the police, they say, who will take things from the corner store without paying, shake you down on your walk home, make your 12-year-old daughter unbutton her shirt.

“People don’t go out on the street because they’re afraid of the government,” said Graciela Piñeda, whose 21-year-old son, Martin García, was the second of her boys to be killed by authorities in the past three years. “These boys never disrespected anyone. They took care of us.”

The questions about who these men were, and how they died, are at the center of a growing controversy over what happened May 22 behind the chain-link fence of the Rancho del Sol in Michoacan state. In the government version of events, Mexican police, after coming under fire, followed a truck onto the 275-acre property. Over the next three hours that morning, backed by helicopters and reinforcements, they battled the gunmen belonging to what the national security commissioner, Monte Alejandro Rubido, described as the country’s “most belligerent cartel,” until 42 of them lay dead.

The police lost one man and made three arrests.

Authorities hailed the opera-

JOSHUA PARTLOW/THE WASHINGTON POST

A poor neighborhood in Mexico worries more about police than a powerful drug gang tion as a victory. They denied that any of the men were executed and said all tested positive for ballistic residue. But human rights officials have begun to investigate the case after questions emerged about the lopsided death toll and whether the bodies showed signs of torture.

The police operation was “at the very least poorly planned, leading to a death toll that raises serious concerns about the proportionality of the use of force,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch.

“This outcome is particularly disturbing in a country where security forces have repeatedly been involved in extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture cases, and where impunity for these grave human rights crimes is the norm,” he said.

More than half of those who died came from Ocotlan, a city of

about 100,000 people set amid strawberry and alfalfa fields an hour’s drive from the ranch.

At one funeral for a man from Infonavit 5, as mariachis played sad ballads and relatives poured whiskey into the casket, the crowd chanted curses against the government. “This was a very pretty town once, but not anymore,” said an aunt of the dead man.“There is a lot of fear now.”

Martin Felipe García Piñeda grew up in Ocotlan and started working at the age of 15, bouncing among low-paying jobs such as security guard and gas station attendant. His passion was wrestling, the flamboyant masked spectacle known as lucha libre.

The sport took him to regional cities and even the capital, but he earned little, and this spring he told his family that he had started working at Rancho del Sol.

Residents mourn at a funeral for one of the 42 men killed in a shootout with police at Rancho del Sol, Mexico.

The farm had a large main residence, with a swimming pool and tennis court. Authorities said that gunmen from the New Generation cartel seized the property as a base of operations.

“He told me he was going to work on a ranch, but he didn’t tell me what he was doing,” said Graciela Piñeda, his mother.

When she got his body back two days after his death, she said her son was “beaten and burned.”

Even before the battle at Rancho del Sol, tensions between residents and police in Ocotlan had risen. In March, gunmen ambushed a federal police patrol in the city, killing five police officers and at least six other people. It was one of several recent attacks attributed to the New Generation cartel, which has grown into one of the country’s most powerful drug gangs. Cartel members attacked a police convoy the next month and killed 15 officers. Weeks later, they shot down a military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.

After the Ocotlan ambush, residents in Infonavit 5 said, police began patrolling the neighborhood, harassing residents and stealing watches and cellphones.

Many consider the young men who died, and the New Generation cartel, as defenders against such aggressions. It was the cartel, said Luis Gerardo García, that delivered mattresses and blankets when homes were flooded and sent truckloads of toys and bicycles to kids for Christmas.

“There are gang members here,” he said. “But they make sure that nobody robs, nobody extorts, nobody kidnaps. They don’t mess with the people here.”

Now that García’s brother and 10 others have died, residents say they are worried and scared. At Martin García’s gym, his fellow wrestlers knelt in the ring and applauded in his honor, then rose chanting “Drako.” Outside the shrine to the Warriors of the Five, a car pulled up and one of the boys’ favorite songs, “One Million Bullets,” could be heard.

Looking on from a plastic chair, Graciela Piñeda wondered: “Who’s going to protect us now?” n

BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

RISE OF AN EMPIRE

BY DAVID A. FAHRENTHOLD, TOM HAMBURGER AND ROSALIND S. HELDERMAN

Chevy Chase was on the plane with Bill Clinton. So was a former president of Brazil. The founders of Google. A former president of Mexico. And John Cusack. ¶ They were all going to Davos, the Swiss resort that holds an annual conclave of the wealthy and powerful. The jet — arranged by a Saudi businessman — provided a luxurious living­room setting for a rolling discussion: Couldn’t the big names at Davos be doing more to solve the world’s big problems? ¶ In the background, a Clinton staff member named Doug Band had an idea that would change the ex­president’s life. ¶ “Only Bill Clinton could bring a group like this together,” Band thought. ¶ Bill Clinton didn’t need Davos. He could do this himself. ¶ From that revelation came the Clinton Global Initiative — an annual gathering of the wealthy and powerful centered not on a place but on a man. In the decade since, that program has become the public face of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the sprawling organization that is now at the center of the Clintons’ public and professional lives and a springboard for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign.

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COVER STORY

Today, the Clinton Foundation is unlike anything else in the history of the nation and, perhaps, the world: It is a global philanthropic empire run by a former U.S. president and closely affiliated with a potential future president, with the audacious goal of solving some of the world’s most vexing problems by bringing together the wealthiest, glitziest and most powerful people from every part of the planet.

The evolution of the foundation, which began as a modest nonprofit focused largely on the ex-president’s library in Arkansas, is a nearly perfect reflection of the Clintons themselves.

It was not designed as a master plan but rather has grown, one brainstorm at a time, in accordance with the ambitious, loyal, restless and often scattered nature of its primary namesake.

Many programs were sparked by chance encounters in Bill Clinton’s life. A meeting with a Harlem shopkeeper. A friend’s plan to fight AIDS. The flight to Davos. Emergency heart surgery.

The foundation now includes 11 major initiatives, focused on issues as divergent as crop yields in Africa, earthquake relief in Haiti and the cost of AIDS drugs worldwide. In all, the Clintons’ constellation of related charities has raised $2 billion, employs more than 2,000 people and has a combined annual budget of more than $223 million.

In the middle of it all is Bill Clinton, a new kind of post-presidential celebrity: a convener who wrangles rich people’s money for poor people’s problems. In the process, the foundation elevates the wealthy by giving them entree to one of the nation’s most prominent political families.

This account of the foundation’s history is drawn from interviews with key players — including some foundation insiders who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they

were not authorized by the charity to comment publicly — and a review of organization records. Through the foundation, Bill Clinton declined a request for an interview but provided a written statement to The Washington Post.

At its heart, the Clinton Foundation is an ingenious machine that can turn something intangible — the Clintons’ global goodwill — into something tangible: money.

For the Clintons’ charitable causes. For their aides and allies. And, indirectly, for the Clintons themselves.

But today, the very things that made the foundation work for Bill Clinton’s purposes — its mega-dollar donations and its courting of the richest and most powerful interests in the world — have proved troublesome for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

As donations have surged, particularly as her bid for the Democratic nomination grew closer, she has been forced to answer for whether those supporters have been not merely giving to a charity but also paying to curry favor with a former secretary of state and a would-be president.

Sights on something big In the beginning of it all, Bill Clinton was feeling unfulfilled.

In the months after he left the White House in 2001, he was living at his family’s new home in Chappaqua, N.Y. His wife was in the Senate.

His daughter was away, first at Stanford, then at Oxford. He stewed about leftover legal bills and bad press over last-minute pardons.

To pass the time, he turned to TiVo. Director Steven Spielberg had given Clinton an early version of the digital TV recorder. The former president holed up for hours watching movies and the TV shows he had missed while

he was president, several friends recalled.

“You go from running the country,” one foundation insider said, “to doing nothing.”

It wasn’t quite nothing. There was a Clinton Foundation back then, started in 1997. There were vague plans for future international charity work. But the nonprofit focused mainly on Little Rock, where Clinton was planning a library and a graduate school of public service, and envisioning an urban renaissance for the city that nurtured his political career. So the famously obsessive Clinton obsessed some more about buildings in Little Rock.

Clinton’s ambitions began to expand after he — and the fledgling foundation — moved into offices in Harlem, in the state where Hillary Clinton had just been elected senator.

There, Bill Clinton was met by adoring crowds.

And he began to believe that the Clinton Foundation was ready to do more.

Once again, as the Harlem offices buzzed with activity, Clinton had people who could follow up on his brainstorms.

“Dee Solomon, she owned a card shop on Lenox Avenue,” said Clyde Williams, the foundation’s domestic policy adviser at the time, recounting the meeting that began one such brainstorm. “She said: ‘Mr. President, I need your help. I’m a small-business owner in this community.’ She’s like, ‘I don’t know what I need you to do, but I need your help.’ ” The president agreed to help. But how?

“We’ll figure this out,” Williams told him.

They did. By 2002, Williams had recruited Booz Allen Hamilton, a management consulting firm, and New York University business school students to mentor Solomon and other small-business owners in Harlem.

Evetta Petty, who owns the Harlem’s Heaven hat boutique, said: “It actually saved me. I think I’d be out of business by now” without that help. Her new mentors told her how to track inventory, build a customer database and offer coupons to bring in buyers. “I mean, I make fabulous hats. But I didn’t really understand how to sell them the best way I could.

Now I do.”

The brainstorms continued. Clinton met high-schoolers who didn’t feel prepared for the SAT. “He was like, ‘We’ll do something about it,’ ” Williams recalled. Foundation staff members partnered with the Princeton Review for a national program. He met poor people who didn’t know about the earned-income tax credit. Soon there was a program for that, too.

Was there ever a time when foundation officials told Clinton that one of his ideas wouldn’t work?

“Not when I was there,” Williams said. He left the foundation in 2006.

Clinton wanted to do something big.

And something international. He wanted to stay out of domestic policy, so it didn’t look as though he was meddling in the domain of the president who had succeeded him. Or the senator he was married to.

Ira Magaziner, a longtime aide, had an idea that fit both criteria. continues on next page

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FOUNDATION HIGHLIGHTS 1997: Clinton Presidential Center The 32-acre site in Little Rock that houses the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, the early core of the foundation. The building opened to the public in 2004 with a series of lectures and other events that served as a reunion for Clinton aides and a relaunching of the Clinton legacy.

2002: Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative A series of projects to promote smallbusiness and entrepreneurial activity that launched in Harlem and spread to cities across the country. The program was a partnership with the consultant firm Booz Allen Hamilton. It is the only major Clinton Foundation initiative to have been officially ended, in 2013, when foundation officials decided the charity should focus on other projects.

2013: Too Small to Fail Launched by Hillary Clinton, it focuses on promoting the wellbeing of children 5 and younger, including support for research on early brain development and learning. Includes partnerships with celebrities who encourage parents to talk to their children and focus on early development.

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KLMNO WEEKLY

COVER STORY

from previous page

New drugs were available to fight the progress of HIV and AIDS, but in Africa the drugs were too expensive for many people. Magaziner wanted to lower the cost. He knew Clinton didn’t have the money to help, because he was still fundraising for the library and his own legal bills.

But, Magaziner told Clinton, he had a name brand with limitless value.

“We should use that reputation and your contacts for something big. If we succeed at this, we can help save millions of lives,” Magaziner wrote in a memo he handed to Clinton at an AIDS conference in 2002. “If we are not so successful, we still might help save tens of thousands of lives which would not be so bad.”

But the truly big brainstorm of the Clinton Foundation’s early years came on that plane to Davos in 2004. Friends saw Clinton — the lost, lonely, TiVo-bingeing ex-president — transformed into a champion of Harlem and an international philanthropist. A celebrity, even among celebrities.

That night in Switzerland, Band began to work on a memo proposing a new kind of conference.

Expanding in all directions “Now here’s something else in my hot little hand,” Clinton said, standing on a stage at the Sheraton Times Square, according to media reports. “My old friend Carlos Slim Helú here has just said he’s willing to develop a cellphone network for Gaza and link it to Jordan’s network. Why, thanks, Carlos. Come up here and be recognized.”

It was September 2005. A year and a half after Band’s brainstorm, the first meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative was a smashing success. Some Clinton aides had been skeptical that it would work, but Clinton had shrewdly timed it to coincide with a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly — when New York was already chockablock with world leaders looking for something more interesting than a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly.

So there were dozens of heads of state in attendance. Bono was there. Mick Jagger was there. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. So was Slim, a Mexican billionaire who is one of the world’s richest men.

So were chief executives from around the world, who wanted to meet heads of state and people like Bono and Slim.

To get in, their companies had all been required to pledge a “commitment to action” — a specific promise to do good in the world.

Starbucks pledged to help poor coffee farmers.

Goldman Sachs pledged to preserve forests in Tierra del Fuego. The crown prince of Bahrain pledged to “educate select Bahraini students for leadership roles.”

For hours, they came to announce their pledges in front of Clinton — revivalists, suddenly seized by the spirit of charity. Clinton nodded approvingly from center stage as companies and individuals promised to spend their money and resources on projects the founda-

REUTERS

tion would monitor. Their pledges added up to $2.5 billion.

From 2004 to 2006 — the years before and after Clinton’s new conclave began — his foundation’s revenue more than doubled, from $58 million to $134 million.

The model that would guide the Clinton Foundation — and in many ways later come to vex Hillary Clinton’s campaign — was now in place: Woo the world’s most powerful interests to help the powerless.

Bill Clinton, in a statement to The Post, said the foundation has found that “partnership and cooperation” work best.

“We’ve worked with both center-right and center-left governments, large and small businesses and NGOs, and Republicans, Democrats, and independents — all of whom we have publicly disclosed,” he said.

By 2009, the foundation had grown to a $242-million-a-year organization. It had nine branches, plus independent fundraising arms in Canada and Britain.

For Clinton, the foundation had re-created many of the things he loved about the presidency — cheering crowds, an army of aides and a resonant sense that he was doing good on a global scale.

The foundation came to mirror Clinton’s White House in another way, too. It employed many of the same people, including Band and Magaziner, and saw some of the same interoffice infighting for Clinton’s favor.

But the former White House employee who made the most in the foundation’s heyday was probably Clinton himself. The ex-president didn’t take an official salary from the foundation. But he has received at least $26 million in speaking fees from companies and organizations that were major donors to his foundation. And in many cases, what Clinton got paid to speak about was, in part, the foundation.

By the Clinton Foundation’s accounting, it has done something good for at least 430 million people in more than 180 countries. (There are about 195 countries in the world, depending on how you count.) When foundation officials last looked back at 2,872 different “commitments” made at the Clinton-convened conferences, they found that only 4.8 percent had not met basic goals and were therefore “unsuccessful” by foundation standards.

Overall, the foundation spends about 89 percent of its money on its charitable mission, according to the independent American Institute of Philanthropy. Based on that analysis, the watchdog group gave the foundation a rating of A for 2013, on a scale that goes to A-plus. Charity Navigator, the other leading group that rates charities, recently put the foundation on a “watch list” because of the negative press that has surrounded it. (That group has not issued a rating for the Clinton Foundation, saying the foundation’s structure is too complex to grade.)

Hundreds of people gathered at a welcoming event in Harlem as former president Bill Clinton and his fledgling Clinton Foundation opened offices there in 2001. One of the charity’s early initiatives began as a mentoring program for Harlem smallbusiness owners.

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15

COVER STORY

ANDRES MARTINEZ CASARES/REUTERS

Bill Clinton talks with members of a farming cooperative in Mirebalais, Haiti, in February.

Campaign brings changes By the end of the last decade, the Clinton Foundation had been built to fit Bill Clinton’s role in the world. He was a private citizen, a super-connected retiree who could raise and spend money with very little scrutiny of who gave it and who got it.

But then, in 2007, Hillary Clinton began running for president.

Since then, the foundation has been reshaped — awkwardly, at times — to accommodate her roles as candidate, secretary of state and, now, candidate again.

Some headaches began with her first presidential campaign. For instance, donors to the successful AIDS program began to worry.

“Secretary Clinton was running for president and they thought this should be separate,” Magaziner said. They wanted to be certain that their money would go only to fight disease.

The AIDS program, now called the Clinton Health Access Initiative, became an independent legal entity in 2010. Today, based in Boston, it employs 1,500 of the more than 2,000 people who work for Clinton-related charities. Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea Clinton, still sit on its board.

The spinoff added one more level of complexity to an already-difficult-to-track organization.

A number of record-keeping slip-ups that have earned the foundation recent scrutiny originated with the Boston-based health group.

Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Depart-

ment brought other big changes.

For one thing, the Obama administration required the foundation to split itself again. The Clinton Global Initiative became its own entity.

The idea was to draw a distinction — at least in theory — between the secretary’s official interactions with world leaders and her husband’s global schmooze-fests with the same people (which Hillary Clinton also attended).

Also, for the first time, the Clinton Foundation had to say who had given it money.

The list stretched to 200,000 names.

It included foreign governments, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which could ask the State Department to take their side in international arguments. And it included a variety of other figures who might benefit from a relationship — or the appearance of a relationship — with the secretary. A businessman close to the ruler of Nigeria. Blackwater Training Center, a controversial military contractor. And dozens of powerful American business leaders, including some prominent conservatives, such as Rupert Murdoch.

In a brief news conference on the campaign trail last month, Hillary Clinton was asked whether she regretted the way the foundation had handled foreign donations.

“I am so proud of the foundation,” she said in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “It attracted donations from people, organizations from around the world, and I think that just goes to show that people are very supportive of the lifesaving and life-

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changing work it’s done here at home and elsewhere.”

Today, the Clintons defend their foundation’s work by saying that its focus always has been on charity.

“We and our supporters care only about impact, not ideology,” Bill Clinton said in his written statement to The Post. “We are an entirely nonpolitical foundation.”

He said he started the foundation as a private citizen to pursue causes he cared about in public life. “We’ve never been afraid to take on big challenges when we believe we have the chance to make progress and improve lives,” he said in the statement.

At times, the Clinton Foundation has employed several key members of Hillary Clinton’s political team.

During her tenure as secretary, the foundation paid a second salary to Huma Abedin, Clinton’s official personal aide, who acted as a contractor to the foundation. The foundation hired Maura Pally, now acting chief executive, who worked previously for Hillary Clinton at the State Department and served as deputy counsel for her 2008 presidential campaign.

Dennis Cheng, another Hillary Clinton aide, went from Clinton’s 2008 campaign to the State Department to the foundation and then to the 2016 campaign.

After Hillary Clinton left the State Department, she became a member of the foundation’s board of directors. Like her husband, she has never drawn a salary from the foundation.

Starting in 2011, Chelsea Clinton began work at the foundation.

Dismissing criticism Now, as Hillary Clinton begins a new presidential run, she has brought new questions for the foundation and its donors. What if she wins? How could this President Clinton avoid conflicts of interest if she deals with donors to the family charity?

Trying to head off criticism, Hillary Clinton formally stepped down from the organization’s board when she began her campaign.

The Clinton Foundation remains a foundation about everything, sprawling into disjointed fields whose only common bond is that they once caught a Clinton’s eye.

In all this time, the foundation has killed off only one major initiative. It was the one that started back in Harlem, when that small-time card-shop owner asked Clinton’s small-time foundation for help.

“The initiative was too labor-intensive to be successful at scale,” Lindsey, the chairman of the foundation board, said in an e-mailed statement. He added: “The success or failure of individual businesses was too dependent on factors beyond the foundation’s control.” The NYU business students began working on Clinton projects in Haiti.

In essence, the work of mentoring small businesses was not easily expanded to a global scale. For the Clintons’ mega-charity, the project that had launched its ambitions was no longer ambitious enough. n

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SPORTS

In day at ballpark, wallet takes a hit Skip the Cracker Jack. The average cost to attend a Major League Baseball game for a family of four is $211.68, while the average cost of a hot dog is $4.39. (The total cost covers four adult average-price tickets, two small draft beers, four small soft drinks, four regular hot dogs, parking for one car, and two least-expensive, adult-size adjustable caps.) n

SOURCES: MLB TEAM MARKETING REPORTS (2010-2015), WWW.TEAMMARKETING.COM, KEVIN LANG, DISTRICTMEASURED.COM, D.C. OFFICE OF REVENUE ANALYSIS

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HEALTH

It’s time to take a stand at the office And now we know for how long: Start with two hours

ISTOCK

90%

Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting.

20%

... And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent.

BY

B RIGID S CHULTE

Y

ou may want to stand up while you read this — and a lot of other stuff.

Experts now say you should start standing up at work for at least two hours a day — and work your way toward four.

That’s a long-awaited answer for a growing number of workers who may have heard of the terrible health effects of prolonged sitting and been wondering whether they should buy standing desks or treadmill desks.

Today, the average office worker sits for about 10 hours, first all

those hours in front of the computer, plowing through e-mails, making calls or writing proposals — and eating lunch. And then all those hours of sitting in front of the TV or surfing the Web at home.

Medical researchers have long warned that prolonged sitting is dangerous, associated with a significantly higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer and depression, as well as muscle and joint problems. Some have gone on to say that the office chair is worse for your health than smoking and kills more people than HIV. Even working out vigorously

before or after work may not compensate for extending sitting.

But now, those researchers have come up with formal suggestions for how much time to sit and to stand that could dramatically change our work habits.

According to the expert statement released in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Americans should begin to stand, move and take breaks for at least two out of eight hours at work. Then, Americans should gradually work up to spending at least half of your eight-hour work day in what researchers call these “lightintensity activities.”

“Our whole culture invites you to take a seat. We say, ‘Are you comfortable? Please take a seat?’

So we know we have a huge job in front of us,” said Gavin Bradley, director of Active Working, an international group aimed at reducing excessive sitting that, along with Public Health England, convened the expert panel. “Our first order of business is to get people to spend two hours of their work day NOT sitting. However you do it, the point is to just get off your rear end.”

Bradley said the first level of activity is simply standing.

“It’s all about mixing it up,” he said. “Metabolism slows down 90 percent after 30 minutes of sitting.

The enzymes that move the bad fat from your arteries to your muscles, where it can get burned off, slow down. The muscles in your lower body are turned off. And after two hours, good cholesterol drops 20 percent. Just getting up for five minutes is going to get things going again. These things are so simple they’re almost stupid.”

Researchers have known about the link between inactivity and higher rates of sickness and mortality dating back to studies of bus drivers and office-based postal workers in the 1950s. And more recent observational studies comparing workers who sit for long periods against those who sit for fewer hours have found that sedentary workers have more than twice the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a 13 percent increased risk of cancer and 17 percent increased risk of dying.

Authors of the new guidelines said they were a starting point only and designed to give people some kind of research-based target, rather than rely on the claims

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made by the manufacturers of treadmill and sit-stand desks that are becoming all the rage. (More than 90 percent of workers in Scandinavia have access to them.)

“This is an initial guidance, which we do expect to have to evolve with time,” said James Buckley, one of the report authors and a professor at the Institute of Medicine at the University Centre Shrewsbury and University of Chester.

James Levine, an obesity expert at the Mayo Clinic and author of the book, “Stand Up,” though not involved in the guidelines, said they were a good start.

In his work, he found that the reason why some people seem to eat a lot, never work out, yet never put on weight, is because they’re standing, walking and moving more throughout the day, rather than sitting for hours on end.

The guidelines “show we need to fundamentally rethink the way we’re working,” Levine said.

Some small studies, he said, have found not only health improved, but also productivity ticked up 15 percent when people stood and moved more during the day. “The way we have developed our workplaces and even our schools is actually profoundly unhealthy. It’s a real design failure.”

But it’s not just office design, the researchers say. It’s work culture.

Levine and other researchers said change is on the horizon.

Some companies are holding standing meetings. Some performance evaluations are done while on a walk or a run.

Jessica DeGroot, who heads the nonprofit ThirdPath Institute designed to help people better integrate their work and home lives, can find herself caught up in work.

“But I know that I think better when I get up and walk outside,” she said.

So at a recent conference, she paired up attendees and had them “Walk and Talk” from 2:30 to 3 p.m.

“At the typical conference, people have been sitting all day, and by 2 or 3 o’clock, they’re drained,” she said. “Instead, when people came back from the walk, they were smiling and engaged.

Strangers sat down next to each other just so they could keep on talking they were so jazzed. It was fun to watch.” n

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BOOKS

Two good friends, and a third guy N ON-FICTION

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REVIEWED BY

P . J . O ’ R OURKE

K BUCKLEY AND MAILER The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties

By Kevin M. Schultz Norton. 387 pp. $28.95

evin M. Schultz’s “Buckley and Mailer” would be fun without Kevin M. Schultz.

He’s a third wheel. What he contributes to the chronicle of friendship between William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer is what an oversize carry-on bag contributes to an airplane flight. If “Buckley and Mailer” were a Bing Crosby and Bob Hope road movie, Kevin M. Schultz would be along instead of Dorothy Lamour. Athos, Porthos and . . . Schultz.

In fairness, telling the story of two men who liked each other is difficult if you don’t like one of them. Schultz detests Buckley. “ . . . he possessed a dark undertone that championed the continuation of certain unsavory aspects of American life, like its racism and its poverty.”

And Schultz esteems Mailer for the wrong reasons. “ . . . profound vision and deep insight, both of which Mailer possessed.”

No, he didn’t. He possessed profound feelings and deep talents.

Mailer was a poète maudit, attempting (with frequent success) to be accursed and outcast for revealing “certain unsavory aspects of American life,” his own included.

Schultz’s subtitle says it all — wrong. “The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties.” The adjective, the verb and the nouns are incorrect.

Schultz is a historian of the ’60s.

I was there. William F. Buckley did not shape the ’60s and would have been appalled to be accused of it.

Buckley, who led conservatism’s long march from cocktail-hour mixed nuts to political main course, shaped the ’80s and, to an extent, the ever-since.

Norman Mailer did not shape the ’60s. Prosperity, pot, the pill and the draft did. Mailer was an artist; he shaped all of creation.

But he had little direct influence on we who fancied ourselves members of the Armies of the Night. And Mailer considered us

RON GALELLA/WIREIMAGE

Norman Mailer, left, and William F. Buckley Jr. were gregarious men in a gregarious age. Their relationship is the subject of a new book.

to be lost in the dark, anyway.

We liked Mailer, but he wasn’t our left jab to Buckley’s roundhouse right. Mailer was our Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, our Hunter S. Thompson avant la lettre.

When I recovered from the ’60s, I was the editor of a magazine in the ’70s. The National Lampoon was hardly prestigious, and I was of no social consequence, but New York’s world of letters was small back then.

I met Buckley a number of times and owe him a boatload of praise.

He was a mainmast of courtesy, an anchor of encouragement and a spinnaker of enthusiasm for whatever one had written.

Only once did I get a chance to talk to Mailer at length. We were seated near each other at a dinner party. “The Executioner’s Song” had just been published. I asked Mailer if Gary Gilmore’s inamorata, Nicole Baker, had as much je ne sais quoi and you-know-what as it seemed. The answer was: Did she

ever.

This led to a conversation — conducted over the shoulders and around the heads of Mailer’s wife and my date — about the irresistible charms of a certain type of American white-trash girl. Norris Church rolled her eyes. My date announced a headache.

I was putting the date into a cab when Mailer capped the evening by throwing a drink and/or a punch (accounts vary) at Gore Vidal. I bitterly regretted missing that. And so, I bet, did Buckley.

“Buckley and Mailer” doesn’t really show that the friendship was difficult. In 1966 Mailer wrote a letter to Buckley: “As much as I miss you . . . for the pleasure of a fine evening, I’m not so certain we can have it now, with Viet Nam to pass the wine. . . . That’s the trouble with bad wars. They spoil the continued existence of difficult friendships.”

But enclosed with the letter was a donation to National Review “in

lieu of dinner,” and shortly after Mailer was Buckley’s guest on “Firing Line.”

Buckley was seriously unkind to Mailer only once, in a 1962 debate, before they became friends.

And “Buckley and Mailer” doesn’t really tell us how close the friendship was. They were gregarious men. It was a gregarious age.

People used to know a lot of people, whether they wanted to or not.

People used to call on the phone.

People used to write letters.

Many of the Buckley-Mailer letters were written to decline invitations. The Buckleys can’t make it to the Mailers’ for dinner because “we cannot profane our Saturdays and Sundays by going to New York.” Mailer can’t take a cruise with Buckley because “it looks as tho I’ll be running for mayor.”

Buckley and Mailer seem to meet most often on “Firing Line.”

And when Buckley and Mailer are socializing, Schultz interrupts with egregious tutorials on subjects such as the Vietnam War. (Schultz concludes that the war was wrong.) Or Truman Capote.

“His pieces often went down like truffles, delightful but unfulfilling.” Truffles are fulfilling enough to sell for $14,000 a kilogram.

I believe it’s customary, at this stage in an unfavorable review, to insert something — anything — complimentary. The prose in “Buckley and Mailer” isn’t academic bad. It’s just bad. “Buckley wrote with a snicker in his pen.” A mental image of candy bars oozing from the nib of a Montblanc has pestered me for days. And there are 27 pages of excellent notes at the end, citing Buckley’s and Mailer’s personal papers and their works and contemporary comment about them. If Schultz had simply published his research, this would be a hell of a book. n O’Rourke’s most recent book is “The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way and It Wasn’t My Fault and I’ll Never Do It Again.”

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BOOKS

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A gripping battle for power in hell

Last blast of U.S.’s glory days in space

F ICTION

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B ILL S HEEHAN

live Barker’s fans have been waiting a long time for this one. “The Scarlet Gospels” is Barker’s first full-scale adult novel since “Coldheart Canyon” in 2001. In the intervening years, he has published one short novel, “Mister B. Gone,” but has devoted most of his energy to writing and illustrating the young adult fantasy series “Abarat.” In his return to the dark side of what he calls the Fantastique, Barker has resurrected two central figures from his earlier work as novelist and filmmaker: the occult detective Harry D’Amour and the Cenobite priest popularly, if inaccurately, known as Pinhead.

Harry is a private investigator whose work frequently takes him into the realm of the supernatural.

Over the years, he has made many enemies among the denizens of Hell. One such denizen is Pinhead, who first appeared (minus the annoying nickname) in the novella “The Hellbound Heart,” which inspired the popular film “Hellraiser” and its seemingly endless string of sequels. “The Scarlet Gospels” marks his first return to the printed page in more than 25 years.

As the novel opens, Pinhead is approaching the end of a monumental — and genocidal — mission: destroying all living human magicians, usurping their powers and absorbing their arcane knowledge. Harry, meanwhile, has taken on a “routine” supernatural investigation that brings him to New Orleans and to the private magical collection of the late Carston Goode. There Harry finds an object familiar to followers of the Hellraiser saga: Lemarchand’s Box. The box is a three-dimensional puzzle whose solution opens a door between this world and the world of the Cenobites, an ancient order specializing in extreme — and imaginative — torments. Inexplicably, the puzzle box begins to solve itself, opening the door and bringing Harry face to face with Pinhead, who has startling plans for Harry and himself. But Harry

escapes and makes his way back to his home base in New York City, where things turn rapidly worse.

Unable to capture Harry, Pinhead abducts his closest friend, Norma Paine, an old blind woman who sees and communicates with the dead. Accompanied by a trio of uniquely qualified companions, Harry follows Norma into Hell and into the heart of the story.

Filmmaker Wes Craven once called Clive Barker “Hell’s anatomist,” a description that has never seemed more accurate. The bulk of the action in “The Scarlet Gospels” takes place in Hell, a blasted region described with an anatomist’s precision. Once there, Harry discovers the reason for Pinhead’s sudden appearance in his life: He is to serve as primary witness to a struggle for power that will alter the very nature of Hell. He is to create a testament — the Scarlet Gospels — that will record the Cenobites’ successful ascent to the throne of Hell. Pinhead’s ferocious assault on that throne, together with Harry’s attempts to rescue Norma and return to the human world, form the substance of this intensely imagined narrative.

At 361 pages, “The Scarlet Gospels” is considerably shorter than such earlier novels as “Weaveworld” and the massive “Imajica.”

Still, Barker’s imagination has always operated on the largest possible scale, and this latest book offers the pleasures of a tightly compressed epic. Its visionary scenario and detailed account of apocalyptic events are as grand and sweeping as anything the earlier books had to offer. At his deepest, most characteristic level, Barker has always been a maker of highly personal mythologies, mythologies at once violent, erotic, sacred and profane. “The Scarlet Gospels” assumes a prominent place in his evolving catalogue of mythic imaginings. n Sheehan is the author of “At the Foot of the Story Tree: An Inquiry into the Fiction of Peter Straub.”

H THE SCARLET GOSPELS

By Clive Barker St. Martin’s.

361 pp. $26.99

LEAVING ORBIT Notes From the Last Days of American Spaceflight

By Margaret Lazarus Dean Graywolf.

317 pp. Paperback. $16

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REVIEWED BY

L ILY K OPPEL

ave you heard that America won’t be going to space anymore? Yeah, I know, we can hitch a ride with the Russians or the Chinese, but that’s just not the same. And a few entrepreneurs are proposing private space launches. But for the most part, the glory days of American spaceflight are relegated to sterile museum halls. When U.S. spaceflight sputtered to an end four years ago with the cancellation of the shuttle program, Margaret Lazarus Dean was among those hoping for a more audible public outcry. What does it mean that America won’t be up in the blackness of space anymore? Have we lost something vital to the American dream by turning our backs on reaching for the stars?

Questions like these underlie Dean’s book “Leaving Orbit,” a meditation on the loss of American spaceflight. On hand for the last launch of the shuttle Atlantis on July 8, 2011, she realized she was witnessing an epic ride — a final blastoff that she believed Americans should have mourned more deeply. “It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends,” Dean writes, quoting Joan Didion.

Dean is an academic who writes with the flair of a blogger and provides lots of fun anecdotes and trivia. On her quest to chronicle the end of the United States in space, she meets a range of fanatics enthralled by space travel who keep geek discussions going at all hours online. She offers personal remembrances of her early trips to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum as a lonely child of divorce, gazing longingly at star charts and spacecraft seats that looked like “beige dentist couches.” She pines for a past colored by science fiction that became fact. She sentimentally recalls astronauts’ descriptions of the “barren and homey” smell of outer space that was stuck to their suits after a spacewalk. And she claims to know just what that odor

is like. “It smells like walking into the atrium of the Air and Space Museum with my father and my brother on a hot Saturday morning in the early 1980s,” she writes.

In the end, the fleet of shuttles grew too old and too expensive to be recertified, essentially taken apart and rebuilt. Dean commiserated with space fans and NASA workers who until the last moment “hoped the retirement decision would be reversed somehow, and still do, hoping against hope.”

Dean tells the stories of those who walked on the moon and of the Eisenhower-era women in cateye glasses who sewed together the astronauts’ protective suits, and she discusses the life of the first African American astronaut, Robert Lawrence, who died in a training flight accident in 1967.

She unsurprisingly spends time on both shuttle program tragedies, Columbia and Challenger, which together overshadow the last leg of American spaceflight, shaping “the shuttle’s story.” Dean, whose first book was a novel about a young girl grappling with the Challenger disaster, is clearly moved by the space program.

Though she was born in 1972, three years after the first manned moon landing, Dean is drawn by the “badass steeliness and crew cuts of the test-pilot sixties astronauts.” Above her desk, she tells us, hangs a photo of a steel plaque left on the Sea of Tranquility: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

She writes, “Is this not stirring?”

I came away from “Leaving Orbit” with a heavy dose of space nostalgia, and I worry about our ability to be stirred again as we were in the past. The journey to space starts with a big collective dream. But in our current world, where our horizons are reduced to a little screen, it’s up to each of us to look starward once more. n Koppel is the author of “The Astronaut Wives Club.”

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OPINIONS

The Cherokee roots of the civil rights movement STEVE INSKEEP is a co-host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and the author of “Jacksonland: President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab.”

Studying the 19th century is like being a parent. You have flashes of recognition that your children behave as you once did. You wonder if your ancestors acted like you, too.

Similar patterns emerge when researching the political ancestors of modern leaders. The 1820s and 1830s — the era when our modern democracy began to take shape — were full of recognizable figures, such as a Georgia governor who fulminated in 1825 against a perceived conspiracy by Washington elites. (He was paranoid that Supreme Court justices and an untrustworthy president would free his state’s slaves. Today his political positions are outdated, but his rhetoric lives on.)

Even more striking is an early19th-century civil rights leader.

Nobody called him that, of course.

But John Ross fought for his rights with tactics that perfectly prefigured America’s 20thcentury civil rights battles.

What people actually called Ross was an Indian. Eventually, he was the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, resisting efforts to drive his people out of their historic homeland in north Georgia and the surrounding states. Seeking to influence a democratic society, John Ross of Georgia used tactics similar to those of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of Georgia. Their parallel experiences say much about what has and hasn’t changed in the United States.

Ross was of mixed race. Born in 1790, he grew up in a changing world. Cherokees had been an independent nation for centuries but were overwhelmed by spreading white settlement in the early 1800s. Unlike many Indian leaders, who rebelled against the new order, the Cherokees decided to join it.

Ross’s English-language skills and education suited him for leadership during this time of adaptation. He aspired to make the Cherokee Nation a U.S.

territory or state.

That was never likely. White settlers wanted Indian land, not the Indians on it. Today, schoolchildren learn the ending of the story: the Trail of Tears in 1838, when 13,000 Cherokees were forced to move west to what is now Oklahoma. Thousands died during that time — the victims of a ruthless, government-sponsored campaign of segregation.

Less well known is the long prelude to this disaster. Ross spent more than 20 years fending off expulsion. His epic battle against Andrew Jackson did much to shape the nation we inherited.

As a young man, Ross joined the Cherokee Regiment, raised to assist the United States in the War of 1812. When the war ended, Ross highlighted his military service.

Joining a Cherokee delegation to Washington, he argued that Cherokees had proved their “attachment” to the United States in war, so their rights must be respected.

He was pioneering a tactic that African Americans would later use.

Frederick Douglass urged black men to enlist in the Civil War and earn the freedom of black slaves.

This didn’t always work, but it worked for Ross in 1816. The

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION

Cherokee chief John Ross, seen in about 1850, pioneered tactics that were later used by black civil rights leaders.

government blocked a plan to seize 2 million acres of Cherokee land.

In 1828, Jackson was elected president. He was determined to move numerous Indian nations west to make way for white settlement.

Cherokees under Ross started a newspaper, the first published by Native Americans. Just as later generations of African Americans would make themselves heard in the pages of the Chicago Defender, Cherokees spoke through the Cherokee Phoenix.

And like later civil rights leaders, Ross found white and religious allies. He appealed to white missionaries who proselytized to Native Americans.

The Cherokees flipped the missionaries, who spread word back to the white population that Cherokees were Christian, civilized and worth defending.

The agitation was not enough.

In 1830, Congress narrowly passed, and Jackson signed, the Indian Removal Act, offering transportation and land to those who “voluntarily” moved west of the Mississippi. Ross sued, much as the NAACP later sued in Brown v. Board of Education, though his cases amounted to nothing.

Denied the shelter of the law, Ross steeled his people for passive resistance, in the spirit of the nonviolent civil rights demonstrators of the 1960s. In defeat, Ross had one consolation: The Army’s rousting out of peaceful Indians fixed this tragedy in our national memory.

While American democracy was expanding in the early 19th century to embrace nearly all white men, including those from poor backgrounds, like Jackson, it remained an openly racist democracy: government “on the white basis,” as Stephen Douglas later put it. In the 1830s, even some of the Cherokees’ political sympathizers saw them as an inferior race whose doom was inevitable.

Later generations of Americans began to confront that underlying racism, recognizing that government “on the white basis” must be wrenched onto a broader and stronger foundation. This made it possible for minority groups to secure their rights using tactics that did not quite work for John Ross. We are repeating the patterns of our ancestors, but we are gradually enjoying different results. n

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TOM TOLES

A tragic ‘unraveling’ in Iraq FRED HIATT is the editorial page editor of The Washington Post.

Emma Sky expected to spend three months in Iraq apologizing for the invasion launched by George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

That was in 2003, when Sky was a 35-year-old, left-leaning, Oxfordeducated, Arab-speaking employee of the British Council, which was looking for civilians to help administer what allied troops had just conquered. Somewhat to her astonishment, Sky went on to spend much of the following decade there. Very much to her astonishment, she worked alongside U.S. generals David Petraeus and, especially, Ray Odierno, helping implement the U.S. surge in 2006-2007 and the drawdown in 2009-2010.

Though her opinion of Bush, Blair and the invasion endured, other views evolved — about the U.S. military, about Iraq and, ultimately, about what caused Iraq’s unraveling, which is the title she gave to her new book.

“The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq” is entertaining because Sky is a wry and intelligent companion. It is sad for its account of how the Obama administration squandered what Sky views as the victory that the surge had snatched from the first catastrophic years of U.S. occupation. It is enlightening for how it helps us unlearn much of what we think we know — for

example, that “ancient hatreds” rending the Shiite, Sunni and Kurds make Iraq a hopeless case.

Sky flew on a British troop plane in June 2003 into Basra, where she expected to be met and given her assignment. She was not met, so she made her way to Baghdad and found herself as the allies’ civilian representative in Kirkuk — essentially, governor.

On her seventh night, her house was shot up, with Sky inside it but luckily uninjured. Reluctantly, she presented herself to Col. William Mayville, commander of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and landlord of the only safe real estate in town.

He welcomed her; in return, she showed up with her laptop open to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which governs protection of civilians in a war zone.

“If I find you in violation of any of the articles,” she warned, “I

will take you to The Hague.”

Over the next year, suspicions gave way to mutual respect. Sky came to see the U.S. Army as very different from the cartoon villain of her imagination. Yet when she left in June 2004, Iraq was consumed by violence, undone, as she saw it, by “the ignorance, arrogance and naivety” of the U.S. occupation. She had come to love Iraq , though, and in 2006 she accepted Odierno’s request to return as his political adviser.

She and Odierno were an unlikely pair. When she told him that she had tried to block the 1991 Gulf War by volunteering as a “human shield,” he “looked at me in amazement. He had never known anyone who had done such things or held such views.”

Sky had come to believe that Shiite-Sunni combat was neither eternal nor inevitable. Before the war, rates of intermarriage had been high. She was heartened by the narrow victory of a nonsectarian electoral bloc — and dismayed when the Obama administration nonetheless backed, in the post-election scramble to form a government, the divisive, Iranian-backed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. That decision, spurred in Sky’s view by the U.S. eagerness to disengage quickly, guaranteed a failure to negotiate a treaty allowing some

U.S. forces to remain.

Christopher Hill, U.S. ambassador to Iraq during much of 2010, takes issue with Sky’s history. In his memoir, he calls her “a very capable but independently minded British national” — but independently minded? — and says that no one but Maliki had the political support to form a government.

Hill, however, echoes Sky’s concern about Washington’s waning interest. “It was increasingly a legacy issue, a matter of keeping faith with our troops rather than seeing Iraq as a strategic issue in the region,” he writes in “Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy.” “By signaling our interest in withdrawal, we began to lose more influence on the ground.” Perhaps because she had so welcomed Barack Obama’s defeat of the “neocons” in 2008, Sky assigns most blame to Hill, Vice President Biden and other officials.

“If only Obama had paid attention to Iraq. He, more than anyone, would understand the complexity of identities, and how people can change,” she writes.

“But his only interest in Iraq was in ending the war.”

She left Iraq again in 2010, “sad, angry, and very afraid for Iraq’s future.” n

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BY ROGERS FOR THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

Biden’s wise words about death STEVEN PETROW writes the column Civilities, in which he addresses questions about LGBT and straight etiquette.

Just before Christmas 1972, I pulled a sheet of paper from my new stationery box and penned a letter to Joe Biden in an awkward cursive: “Dear Senator Biden, I was very sorry to read about the passing of your wife and daughter…” the note began.

I was 15 years old.

Why would a teenager write a sympathy note to a United States senator? I think it was a combination of the fact that as an aspiring young politico, I already had a sense of Biden as an idealistic, emotional man — and that I was deeply upset by the shocking deaths of his wife, Neilia, and daughter, Naomi, in a car accident while on a trip to buy the family’s Christmas tree.

I was also struggling to explain the unexplainable.

I’d yet to experience a death in my own family and the bubble of certitude I had been born into was pretty much intact until I heard about the Biden deaths. In time I’d learn that lesson more fully, but back then I had only a glimmer that in life, to borrow from Dashiell Hammett, we live only while blind chance spares us. Or, as the vice president himself said at Yale’s commencement only last month: “Reality has a way of intruding” into one’s life.

After I put my sympathy note into the mail, I forgot about it until several months later when a

cream-colored envelope arrived for me from “Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Delaware United States Senate Washington D.C.” “Dear Mr. Petrow,” read the letter inside: Dear Mr. Petrow: I offer a belated thank­you for your kind words of condolence. I deeply appreciate your sentiments. I owed so very much to Neilia. She had a talent for making not only her own life worthwhile but also the lives of those around her. She was both a loving mother and a loving wife. In addition, she was my political confidant, in whose judgment I had implicit and utmost trust. Neilia looked forward to our coming to Washington. Now our life has been completely torn apart by an event I shall never completely

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BY LOWE FOR THE SUN-SENTINEL

understand. Neilia deserved better. Thanks so much for your note. It was deeply appreciated.

Best wishes, Joe Biden Written on a manual typewriter, Biden’s letter has withstood four decades in my home filing system. It’s also become an artifact of my teenage years, a hard-copy touchstone to an era long gone.

The envelope also contained two Mass cards, one each for Neilia and Naomi. On the back of Neilia Biden’s card came a quote from Romeo and Juliet: “Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.” His infant daughter’s card read: “Dear God, What greater thing can be said of Amy than Ezekiel’s words: ‘As is the mother, so is her daughter.’”

Above all, I was struck by Biden’s reflection that there might never be an explanation of this tragedy that he — or anyone — would completely understand.

The certainty of his uncertainty astounded me, having come of age in a black and white world, both on TV and in real life.

So last weekend, after reading the news that Biden had lost yet another child — his son, Beau Biden, who as a 4-year-old survived that awful car accident, died May 30 of brain cancer — I

took out pen and paper to write him again.

“Dear Mr. Vice President, I am very sorry to hear about the loss of your son, Beau,” I started. I made note of his namesake son’s many accomplishments, professional and personal, adding: “Forty-three years ago you wrote to thank me for a condolence note I had sent you as a teenager on the passing of your wife and daughter. If anything your letter taught me that life’s complexities can’t always be understood and that they must be accepted, with the prayer that something good will follow.”

After mailing it, I thought to myself, “How infrequently do I take pen to paper these days?” I realized that the tactile act of writing by hand allows me time to think before I commit to words; such a lost art can also be a deliberate way of feeling and remembering. Not because it’s more “proper” to hand write a note than to use e-mail or post thoughts on social media, but because a death is so concrete and so permanent and so, too, should be the means of how we express our loss so that, at the very least, we’ll always have that hard copy of our feelings — if not our loved ones or those we’ve never met, but whom we want to always remember. n

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FIVE MYTHS

Body cameras BY

N ANCY L A V IGNE

Body cameras aren’t new, but since the spate of high­profile violent encounters between police and unarmed citizens — Michael Brown, Chris Lollie, Eric Garner, Marlene Pinnock and others — they’ve been at the center of our debate about how to reduce these types of incidents. Here are five myths about the power of body cams.

1

Body cams capture the whole story.

When Ferguson, Mo., police started wearing cameras after the shooting death of Michael Brown, then-Police Chief Tom Jackson proclaimed “the quality is good” with regard to the images his officers were recording. But rarely do body-worn cameras capture police-citizen interactions with such a high degree of clarity.

Body cams have the same limitations as stationary public surveillance cameras, or CCTV (closed-circuit television), including the camera’s viewshed, available lighting and lowvisibility weather conditions.

Another factor that compromises precision is the camera-wearer’s movement, which can mask or distort incidents on playback.

And cameras capture different details depending on where they are positioned on the officer.

Like fixed surveillance cameras, body-worn lenses capture only the perspective of the officer and the direction in which he or she is facing. They rarely capture the proverbial “smoking gun” and thus are unlikely to replace witness testimony. In many cases, they’re a complement to it at best.

2

They’re filming 24/7.

Officers have considerable discretion in choosing when to turn their cameras on, which can

affect what they capture and how effective the footage will be.

There is ample opportunity for officers, intentionally or not, to fail to activate their cameras in a timely manner. Take the case of the Mesa, Ariz., Police Department, which found that giving officers discretion resulted in a 42 percent reduction in video files generated monthly. That saves data storage, but it also means cameras might not be turned on during the moments that lead up to violent interactions. If police and the public want a visual record of all interactions, from start to finish, between citizens and cops, municipalities have to mandate it.

3

Video will root out bad cops.

When Denver police started phasing in body cameras, Chief Robert White said that citizens in his city “should know officers are being held accountable” and that “the only officers who would have a problem with body cameras are bad officers.” The presumption being that the introduction of body cams means bad cops will eventually be off the street. But not always.

Police unions have had a say in whether agencies adopt body cameras; in some cities there is debate over proposed policies that would bar the review of footage for the explicit purpose of identifying misconduct.

And while CNN’s Mark O’Mara

JOHN LOCHER/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Footage from a Las Vegas police body-camera demonstration. More police departments, including New York, are considering their use.

— the attorney for George Zimmerman — argues that “people act better when they know they’re being watched,” we’ve learned from the Eric Garner case that interactions can turn deadly, even when cameras (in that case, phone cameras) are rolling.

4

Public record means public access.

Police are civil servants, their body cams are public equipment and the videos they record are technically public records. But that doesn’t mean the public will get immediate or unlimited access to the footage these cameras produce. While public demand for the release of video footage is high, meeting that demand is costly because it requires redaction (removing parts that aren’t for public consumption) first.

This time-consuming, expensive process is necessary to protect the privacy of innocent bystanders, victims and children.

And solutions, so far, are imperfect: The Seattle Police Department shares footage on YouTube, but because the feeds

are blurred and soundless, their utility is fairly low. Automated redaction software hasn’t been developed yet, and until it arrives, police agencies may decide that privacy outweighs transparency.

5

Cameras will save lives.

That’s the whole point, right?

As Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) says, if a picture’s worth a thousand words, then “a video is worth a thousand pictures and untold lives.” It’d be nice if that were true, but the jury’s still out. Early research with the Rialto, Calif., Police Department found that camera use is associated with lower rates of both police use of force and citizen complaints, suggesting that cameras have a “civilizing effect” on officers and citizens alike; that’s a good thing. But it’ll take more time, more research and — unfortunately — more trial and error to definitively say whether body cameras have a serious impact on the number of officer-involved deaths. n La Vigne is director of the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute.

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 2015

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GREAT WINE. GREAT FOOD. GREAT FUN.

It’s the largest gathering of wineries in the region, and the only professionally-judged wine event dedicated to wines produced in Chelan, Douglas, Grant and Okanogan counties. And this year it’s bigger than ever—more food, wine, beers, ciders, distilleries and eateries.

Saturday, August 22

6pm to 9pm

Town Toyota Center, Wenatchee

Tickets $45 each • A limited number of VIP tickets available for $65 each Available online at wenwineandfood.com Presented by Foothills Magazine

oothills

WENATCHEE ❆ LEAVENWORTH ❆ CHELAN AND ALL OF NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON

Interested in having a booth at this event?

E-mail us at info@ncwwineawards.com